What is the Physician Clinical Support System for Methadone (PCSS-M)?

PCSS-M offers a national network of trained health care provider mentors with expertise in the clinical pharmacology of methadone and clinical education. Mentors are supported by NATIONAL EXPERTS in the use of methadone and by a MEDICAL DIRECTOR, C0-MEDICAL DIRECTOR, and SENIOR ADVISOR.

The PCSS-M MENTORS are members of medical specialty societies and provide mentoring support and educational services based on evidence-based practice guidelines. The efforts of PCSS-M are coordinated by a STEERING COMMITTEE composed of representatives from the Federal government and the leading pain and addiction medicine societies, along with primary care and psychiatric organizations that represent the target health care provider populations.

PCSS-M provides educational services to any and all health care providers treating patients with methadone in an effort to increase the appropriate use and safety of this efficacious but clinically challenging medication.

The PCSS-M is designed to offer support to clinicians treating pain and addiction with methadone on a number TOPICS including:

• Patient assessment and selection

• Initiating and titrating methadone

• Conversion from other opioids

• Dosing and patient monitoring

• Interpreting methadone serum levels

• Drug-drug interactions

• Methadone and cardiac conduction

• Minimizing risk of diversion and overdose

• Management of co-occurring conditions

• Identification and provision of useful resources

This project is funded by a grant from The Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT); grant#1H79TIO20294-01. 

PCSS-M Background

Methadone prescribing has substantially and appropriately increased in recent years because increasing numbers of individuals are in need of treatment for opioid dependence or chronic, intractable pain. Unfortunately, methadone overdoses have also concurrently increased, partly because methadone has a complex pharmacology, and few physicians or other health care providers receive any training in proper use of methadone.

The PCSS-M has been established as a complementary organization to the existing Physician Clinical Support System for Buprenorphine (PCSS-B), which ASAM successfully developed, implemented and maintains. The PCSS–B currently has a network of mentor physicians who provide support to over 3000 PCSS participants throughout the country on the use of buprenorphine in the treatment of opioid dependence. The PCSS-M partners with this network, working in parallel and using a similar model to engage as many health care providers as possible in mentoring and education concerning optimal use of methadone in a variety of health care settings.
 

How Does the PCSS-M Operate

PCSS-M mentors are practicing clinicians. PCSS-M mentors will be available within reason and based upon demand, to provide services via telephone, email, or at their place of clinical practice. This means that you will be able to observe a mentor managing patients on methadone at a time and place that is mutually convenient to you and your PCSS-M mentor.

PCSS-M mentors are available to assist you in your practice and will work with you to arrange a time that is mutually convenient. Based on your need, and the availability of your local/regional PCSS clinician, services can be rendered within 24 hours.

While it is expected that inquiries presented to mentoring health care providers will be based on fact patterns related to actual cases, remarks and opinions from mentoring health care providers should be understood as being general in nature and not directed at a specific patient or case. The PCSS-M program is a vehicle for the sharing of knowledge and information; it is not a referral mechanism. Of course, opinions and counsel from a mentor should not be used as a substitute for the opinion, judgment, and knowledge of the treating physician. Finally, no physician-patient or other relationship, expressed or implied, is created between a mentoring health care providers and any patient by virtue of participation in the PCSS-M program.

How to get involved

Contact PCSS-M Staff for more information about the program or to find a PCSS-M clinician in your locale or region.

To register as a PCSS-M Participant, you may contact the PCSS-M directly or download, complete, and return the PCSS-M Participant Registration Questionnaire form (forthcoming).  PCSS-M staff will match you to a mentor within 2 days of receiving your registration form.

For more information about applying to become a mentor click here: PCSS-M MENTOR APPLICATION.

© 2008 New York Academy of Medicine

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